Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-12-21

We all endure trials in life; and we recently discussed that fact here. Some trials, of course, are more severe than others… some only seem so, and lesser challenges become bigger obstacles… and some trials are “blessings in disguise.”

You have heard that expression, “a blessing in disguise.” Whenever I hear it, I think of the story about Winston Churchill during the London blitz, looking out over a burning city. An aide supposedly said, “Perhaps this is a blessing disguise.” Churchill supposedly harrumphed, “Some blessing. Some disguise.”

We see through a glass darkly, and cannot always know the larger picture. That is one reason why faith, and prayer, and reliance on God, are so important.

These days, I am persuaded, our trials are worse than ever, at least unique at this point in history. I refer to our national trials and trauma – the challenges we face in society, the breakdown of morals and manners, standards and traditions; betrayal by institutions and destructiveness by groups and individuals.

And I also refer to personal trials. How can I know the trials outside my circle of friends and correspondents? Because our society’s crises are causing personal crises. Many of our trials, yours and mine, in the areas of friends, family, finances, security, and confidence flow from the dissolution of our culture. Addiction, abuse, violence, crime, broken relationships, abortion… these are trials we endure in the larger realms of our lives, and the close-up spheres of our existence.

Let us think of one of the most iconic examples of a trial, so famous that it has entered the language, “going through the fiery furnace.”

In the Book of Daniel, chapter 3, is the account of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who constructed a golden idol and commanded that all bow down before it. And anyone who refused would be executed, thrown into a blazing furnace. The king was told that three officials, named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to worship the golden statue.

They were brought before the king and explained that they worshiped only the God of the Bible, and would not bow down to an idol. Nebuchadnezzar commanded that they be thrown into the fiery furnace, heated seven times hotter than normal. It was so hot that, it was written, the jailers handling them died of the heat. When the king was able look into the furnace, however, he saw the three walking around, not bent, not bowed, not burned. And he saw a fourth figure with them – he said looking “like a son of God.”

Who was the fourth man? Not an angel; not a Holy Fireman except by metaphor. Bible scholars regard the Fourth Man as the pre-incarnate Jesus, as He did appear at times through the Old Testament.

This is a lesson for us today.

Unlike some other nuanced views, this is what I take away:
* There will be trials, always; don’t kid yourself.
* Never compromise with the “world system.” We are surrounded by idols these days. Don’t be seduced; don’t compromise; do not lose faith.
* Don’t bend; don’t bow; and you will not be burnt.
* If God wanted to spare those three men, He could have extinguished the fire. He could have made the furnace crumble. He could have struck down the king and the jailers.
* God had them go through the trial, and then save them, as a lesson in Faith. For us.
* Jesus is with us in trials. He does not want us to pray that “life” never happens… but to trust Him when “life happens.”

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Notice again that God doesn’t push us toward peaceful detours. But He promises to be with us… so we can “fear no evil.”

The rotten world-system today is our King Nebuchadnezzar. Our crises – and they are real – are our personal fiery furnaces. Are you thinking of a family problem, or at the other extreme, society’s mess? Do you grieve over a friend, the school board, the White House, everything in between? Do not compromise, do not fear, do not bend, do not bow…

… and you will not burn. Look for that Fourth Man. He is with you.

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One of my favorite actors, Charles Laughton, once appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and dramatically recited, from memory, the story of the Fourth Man. Please watch! (The only mistake was, he called it the fourth chapter of Daniel instead of the third.) By the way, can you imagine a Hollywood star, today, being invited on prime-time TV to recite a chapter from the Bible? Times HAVE changed.

Click: Charles Laughton Shares the Story of the Fiery Furnace

1-16-17

Four years ago this week my wife lay dying. She had been sick for a long time – all her life, really – but in recent years the diabetes and heart attacks and strokes and cancers and heart and kidney transplants and amputations and much else, had taken their toll. She suffered a hemorrhage, lost most of her blood before transfusion, and was in a coma for a week. Our children flew in from far and wide – half an hour away; from across the continent; from Ireland.

It was on Monday, January 21. In the hallways of the hospital, and from other rooms, we could hear the TVs turned to news: Inauguration Day. It was pushed back from January 20, as the Constitution respects Sundays. We stood around Nancy’s bed, with monitors blinking, and we faintly could hear the pomp and circumstance, the music and announcers, from the Capitol steps, echoing in shiny hospital hallways.

At the moment, the very moment, that Obama took the oath of office, Nancy died. The monitor flat-lined. The first of us to break the silence was my son Ted: “Mom always said that if Obama actually became president a second time, she’d just die.”

Families have different ways of coping. Seeped in humor and politics for years, we evidently found ours. Lest we be thought cold, my daughter Emily will tell people that we had grieved for Nancy in many ways for many previous years.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord
(Isaiah 55:8-9). Thank God.

This anniversary of sorts has me thinking of the upcoming inauguration, also. Meditating upon God’s ways, I thought about that famous unpredictable, larger-than-life character; intemperate and over the top in uncountable ways; notable for prowess and strong actions, but also for womanizing and crazy hair. Well known to history. An unlikely person to be chosen by God to lead and perhaps redeem His people.

Donald Trump?

No, actually I was thinking of Samson.

We can find parallels, antecedents, and foreshadows wherever we look, if we look hard enough; affinities as well as exceptions to rules that tempt us to draw lessons. So I will only go so far. I mean, Samson was flawed, yet ultimately obeyed the commands of righteousness. He tore down the temple; yet to reform the system he deigned to destroy its artifice.

With Trump a new era begins – and I think this is, for once, not a quadrennial cliché. At the beginning of the campaign I opposed him, wrote against him, saying that I would not want to vote for someone whom I would not want as a neighbor. I still am not reconciled to his coarseness… but I have learned to discern between scatology and straight talk. The vocabulary of hard truths and agenda of bold solutions.

As the campaign progressed, he defined his message and platform, even to enumerating specific grievances and remedies, while his opponents in the primaries and general election actually grew less explicit about their own views. Week by week, citizens in living rooms and kitchens, churches and taverns, offices and factories, started to think that things they had complained about last week – and even since the ‘60s – were finally being articulated. And by someone who they seemed to trust would not forget them, as politicians always do.

The silent revolt of the Silent Majority is thus explained. No mystery. People with grievances; evangelicals; disillusioned working people; long-suffering victims of stagnation and rising crime rates and economic insecurity and public corruption… did not stay home this year. No mystery. People who had become too cynical to vote for president, for years, trekked to the voting booths. I know. I was one of them.

But, now what? Who knows? A man as unpredictable as Donald Trump might wind up disappointing his legions. But I don’t think so. More likely, he will disappoint nervous Republican politicians who are hoping he will revert to form in Washington DC – to be the same old, do the same old.

But the entrenched interests – those within his own party; and those who thirst for his blood, even before the inauguration, from the Disloyal Opposition – sense their possible doom, and they will fight like wounded rats. Return to this essay in a year, in four years, in a decade, if the nation and the world last that long. Let’s see: I say that myriad things will never be the same. We are at a turning point.

Civility; good will; public discourse; genuine bipartisanship; legislative compromise; political traditions… all are now virtually extinct. Those geniis will never return to those bottles. And if your first mental response to this was, “Yes, but remember what so-and-so did…” inserting the name of your favorite enemy, you have proven my point.

Samson tore down the temple, a necessary act of obedience. Daniel calmed vicious lions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego endured the fiery furnace. David was a horrid and lustful sinner who yet was anointed of God for great works. Review the heroes of faith and history, and pray that President Trump may be found not wanting.

Get ready for a ride. Whether Donald Trump is a committed Christian I know not. But he can receive, as any of us can, and act upon, God’s call. Buckle up your prayer sandals: the new president will need our prayers, as does the nation, as do we all, every one of us.

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Click: Battle Hymn Of the Republic